The Federal government is offering Aboriginal communities a big pile of money if they sign over the rights to their land in return for the right to own their homes on traditional lands. For its part, the government will lease out the land for commercial development in order to build up the local economy in these areas.
Let's set aside the cultural oxymoron of personal ownership in a communal society. I wasn't aware that all the problems that Aboriginal people in remote communities on their traditional lands would be fixed by a mortgage.
Now, this is when I get confused. These are people who don't have jobs and wouldn't normally qualify for a mortgage. And, as I understand it, an asset is only valuable if there is a chance that someone else would be willing to buy it. Owning something that can't be sold means that what you own is worthless. Is there really a demand for houses on traditional lands? Selling a house in a regional or rural centre is hard enough, but in remote Aboriginal communities? Guess I missed that section on Domain.com.au.
And is Westfield really so keen to build a strip shopping mall in remote areas of Australia that they want to circumvent negotiating with traditional owners and just deal with the Federal government for that lease instead? And just what shops are they going to open? David Jones? Sunglasses Hut? Flight Centre? Gloria Jeans? And the workers for these new shops will come from where ... the local communities? Wouldn't prices be very high when you consider the additional transportation costs that the new shops would have to recover? And where would the shoppers come from, given that local people in these small communities would be spending any money they had on their new mortgages?
Home ownership requires skills to maintain and improve the property. And that takes tools and materials and training. Where would all this come from? These are costs that would be difficult for new homeowners with big mortgage payments to absorb.
I gotta tell you, this makes no sense to me at all. Hats off to those communities that tell Mal Brough and Co. to go take a hike.
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Surely it's all about control? By the Mabo decision and subsequent decisions on land rights, the federal government lost control of lands that were originally in public ownership. This government is all about control, of the media, of any form of dissent from bureaucrats, judiciary, NGOs, and of the states by a combination of bullying and financial threats. But you can't sell federal control to the public. So you sell it as indigenous Australians having the chance to own their own homes, which all "aspirational voters" naturally aspire to. The fact they literally have to sell the farm to do it is glossed over.
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